Paleontology

A precursor to dinosaurs

An 11-centimeter right femur is all that remains of the oldest dinosaur precursor ever found in South America

The largest “sea dragon” fossil in the UK

Paleontologists and conservationists announced that they had identified the UK's largest ichthyosaur fossil

Rodolfo Nogueira: Stunningly real dinosaurs

How a paleoartist combines technical and scientific knowledge to recreate extinct animals with a wealth of detail

Caribbean incursions

Studies back up the hypothesis that the Caribbean Sea flooded parts of the western Amazon between 23 and 10 million years ago

Armed and Armored

A new species of armored dinosaur with a very peculiar tail has been described by Chilean paleontologists

Protozoan fossil in Brazilian amber

Researchers at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ) have described a new extinct species of protozoan: Palaeohypothrix bahiensis

The Battle of the Fossils

The State Museum of Natural History Karlsruhe in Germany announced that it has no plans to return the original fossil of Ubirajara jubatus to Brazil

The problem of fossil traficking

Paleontologists speak with Federal Prosecutors and the Federal Police to bring a stop to the trafficking of fossil assets in Brazil

Brazilian paleontologists identify new carnivorous dinosaur

A group of Brazilian researchers has identified a new species of carnivorous dinosaur, a dromeosaurid named Ypupiara lopai

The Saga of the Paratethys

The world's largest lake formed 12 million years ago and then disappeared, giving rise to the Caspian and Black Seas

The near extinction of sharks

Ocean sediment fossil records suggest that today's sharks are descended from the few survivors of a mass extinction that wiped out nearly all the shark species that lived in the early Miocene Epoch

The pterosaur of the trees

A 160-million-year-old fossil discovered in Liaoning, northeast China, belongs to a new species of pterosaur, which has been generating curiosity

In the footprint of smuggled fossils

Paleontologists speak with Federal Prosecutors and the Federal Police to bring a stop to the trafficking of fossil assets in Brazil

Pterosaur precursors

A new study suggests that a group of small extinct ground-dwelling vertebrates, called lagerpetids, were the closest relatives of these mysterious winged reptiles

The oldest and largest blind snake

Paleontologists from the University of São Paulo (USP), Ribeirão Preto campus, have identified the world’s largest and oldest blind snake

Could these be the precursors of pterosaurs?

Study suggests that extinct small terrestrial vertebrates, the lagerpetids, were the closest relatives of those mysterious winged reptiles | 6'43

The advanced brain of a primitive dinosaur

The brain of a well-preserved specimen of Buriolestes schultzi, one of the oldest known dinosaurs, has been reconstructed using computed tomography, suggesting an unusual evolutionary path for one of the most important lineages of this extinct group of reptiles: the sauropods

The blood parasites of a dinosaur

Brazilian paleontologists have identified fossilized blood parasites in the back leg bone of a titanosaur that lived some 85 million years ago

The dinosaur with cancer

An herbivorous dinosaur that lived about 76 million years ago in what is now the province of Alberta in western Canada had highly aggressive bone cancer in its right hind leg

The oldest scorpion in South America

260-million-year-old arthropod fossil found in sedimentary rocks at the side of the road in the state of Santa Catarina

30,000 years ago in the Americas

Mexican site suggests settlement of the Americas began 30,000 years ago

Dinosaur or lizard?

A giant tortoise

The largest freshwater turtle that ever existed, possibly the largest of all turtles, lived between 13.8 million and 5.3 million years ago in South America, inhabiting a larger area than previously thought

The predator with voracious jaws

A fossil discovered in Rio Grande do Sul is the best-preserved representative of the herrerasauridae, one of the first strains of carnivorous dinosaur

Tuatara fossil discovered in Rio Grande do Sul

The oldest specimen of a sphenodon in the southern hemisphere has been found in the municipality of Candelária, in the Brazilian state of Rio Grande do Sul

A landscape in an egg

A group led by paleontologist Sérgio Alex Azevedo, from the National Museum of Rio de Janeiro, was able to identify the fossil by analyzing its microstructure

A stranger in the Grand Canyon

280-million-year-old fossil footprints from an ancient desert provide first evidence of the presence of vertebrates that in theory had not yet adapted to dry environments

A 42-million-year-old whale with legs

Its limbs were well adapted to swimming and were not suited to moving across land

Max Langer: How prehistoric life forms are classified

Paleontologist explains what makes a reptile a dinosaur and explains why the origin of these animals is so hotly debated

The First Land of the Dinosaurs

Many of the oldest known fossils of these reptiles, which lived 230 million years ago, have been found in the Brazilian state of Rio Grande do Sul, on the border of Argentina